A 2D contact dynamics model is proposed as a microscopic description of a collapsing suspension/soil to capture the essential physical processes underlying the dynamics of generation and collapse of the system. Our physical model is compared with rea
l data obtained from in situ measurements performed with a natural collapsing/suspension soil. We show that the shear strength behavior of our collapsing suspension/soil model is very similar to the behavior of this collapsing suspension soil, for both the unperturbed and the perturbed phases of the material.
Sand traps are used to measure Aeolian flux. Since they modify the surrounding wind velocity field their gauging represents an important challenge. We use numerical simulations under the assumption of homogeneous turbulence based on FLUENT to systema
tically study the flow field and trapping efficiency of one of the most common devices based on a hollow cylinder with two slits. In particular, we investigate the dependence on the wind speed, the Stokes number, the permeability of the membrane on the slit and the saltation height.
